paxromana

Probably not ... even Acme has standards!

THere were Portee (i.e. truck carried but not necessarily fired from) AT guns (2 pdrs at least) used in the Western Desert Campaign (at least) there was alkso the Deacon which was a 6pdr mounted on/fired from a truck which was only used in the Western Desert 42-43, the Italians alos had Truck mounted/fired artillery (75mm I presume)... and, of course, there was the Halftrack mounted 75mm and 88mm guns the Germans used and the various allied halftrack mounted guns.

So, if captured these guys can be treated as Mercenaries as per 'Russian Rules?'

Yes, I think it's too early to come to definite conclusions about whether, for example, Armoured Vehicles have become next to useless or how important airpower and artillery are likely to be in the future. Why? For the simple reason that the Russians have mishandled every single aspect of this misbegotten invasion from the get go. How would a Ukraininan style army have performed against a US style invasion of the same size? And how would a Russian Army perform against a US/NATO style army? From that point of view I think that any definitive conclusion is way premature ... and may not even be possible.

The M4a2 models supplied to the USSR were diesel engined. Not Ronsons.

Pretty much, yes. It is well understood that Russian incompetence was burning up men at a great rate of knots and that the provision of all those western manufactured goods through Lend Lease allowed the Soviets to comb men out of factories and off farms to be fed into the meat grinder ... lots of men. Even so, Soviet incompetence traded lives for ground and byt 1944 they were conscripting 17 year olds, and in early 45 they were conscritinmg 16 year olds ... Every pound of Spam feeding the Red Army meant fewer farm labourers, every pair of boots provided to Red Army soldiers meant fewer tanners, cobblers and the like. Every pound of explosives or explosive precursors meant fewer chemical and munitions factory workers. And all those warm bodies were fed into the Red Army meat grinder to become ex-warm bodies as soon as the marginally competent leaders could manage it. As for the T-34, fair design but a crap tank as constructed. And how many of them would have been able tro be manufactured by the Locomotive factories that were converted to Tank production because the allies provided all the Locomotives the Soviets needed during the war (IIRC the Soviets produced less than a dozen between 1942-45). The Soviets noted they preferred US, Canadian and, yes, even British Tanks over their own because the Lend Lease ones were reliable (and they loved Bren Gun Carriers for recon units). Heck, their breakthrough Armies were limited in number by the number of M3/M5 Halftracks the Allies provided since the Russians built none of their own. Sure, the Soviets played a part in winning the war, and the Allies most certainly would have had a much harder time if they had collapsed, but they still would have won with nuclear mushroom clouds over German cities in late 1945 without the Soviets.

Indeed. The Russians have lived in denial of this ever since WW2 (and a lot of westerners believe their propaganda - even though there are detailed studies of just how dependent the Soviets were on the west to do as well as they did) ... they probably wouldn't have lost, the fact is that Nazi recial policies were such that surrender wasn't really a choice, but without Lend Lease it's likely the Western Allies would have had to drop the first Atomic weapons on Germany and that the 'Iron Curtain' would have been far to the east of where it ended up ... possibly even onm the old pre-1939 Russian Border.

The really big question about China is ... is their military any better than the Russian one. The evidence suggests that no-one is game to tell Emperor Xi that he may not have any clothes on. And what I have read about their 'new' equipment seems to indicate that none of it was produced in any really large numbers before it was replaced with something even newer ... and the strong indications are that this was because the earlier iterations were ... not very good at all. Does anyone have any idea whether PLA/PLAAF/PLAN 'wargames' are any more than the same sort of heavily scripted showpieces of no real military value than the Russian ones were? The real problem seems to be exactly that Xi is living in his own little thought bubble ... quite probably a delusional one. Maybe not quite as delusional as Putler's, but I don't see anyone telling the Emperor he has no clothes any time soon, so it is a real worry that he may act on delusion rather than reality.

Surely *when* Ukraine retakes Crimea all those illegal immigrants and enemy aliens will simply (and quite legally) be expelled and forcibly returned to Russia ... and that would be, as I understand it, quite OK under International Law as long as not done brutally.

As I pointed out a while ago, ramping up artillery ammunition from peacetime to wartime levels is a real and ongoing historical problem -- WW1 it took a year, WW2 it meant Hitler went with blitzkrieg because he was told that to build up the shell supply needed for a WW1 scale war (even with late WW1 stormtroop tactics) would require too long and take up resources simply not available even with Germany's bankrupting level of pre-war military spending. Then there's the problem of explosive precursors ... it was a real problem for the Germans in WW1 & WW2 and Russians in WW2 and could well be again, for the Russians ... the Germans had a choice between producing fertiliser or explosives. In WW1 it led to famine in WW2 they stripped occupied Europe of food to avoid that at home, yet still had to resort to remanufacturing the xplosives from obsolete ordnance (Nipolit). I know the Russians export nitrate fertilisers ... so they may have the reserve capacity for explosive production, but even so that would mean a long war would strip them of the sales revenue for fertiliser AND make the world food situation even worse. Not that Herr Putler cares, of course.

New poster, but have been lurking for a while and have found this forum's posts the most useful on the 'net ... I have a background in History and knew that a lot of the stuff posted by regular news outlets was, much more often than not, complete rubbish based on an almost total lack of relevant knowledge ... but this forum has been great to read! Two things ... Artillery Ammunition: There has been some mention of Ukraine having shot off a lot (perhaps most) of their Pact calibre stuff which is why it is so important that they get as many NATO compatible artillery pieces as possible ... and can therefore draw down on NATO artillery stocks. And some suggestions that Russia may be running out of some calibres themselves. Thing is, while there have been comments about Russian shortages of 'high tech' warfighting gear and, more recently, of some artillery calibres, but I believe that there may be an underestimation of just how hard it is to ramp up the production of artillery shells. Consider WW1 - all sides soon shot off their pre-war stocks very quickly in 1914 and it took them a year for production to be brought up to a level to meet actual combat usage/demand. Inded, one of the several reasons that Hitler went with Blitzkrieg tactics for WW2 was that he was informed that German industry would take a like time to tool up to produce the amount of ordnance a WW1 style war would require .... and that there wasn't enough 'fat' in what was left of the *uncommitted* German economy to manage it in peacetime. So, at the rate the Russians are shooting of artillery shells, at some point they are going to have to ramp up production - and it is almost certainly going to be a bigger drain on their sanction ridden economy than they can probably afford ... indeed, sanctions may make achieving the production levels needed virtually impossible. So, even allowing some miraculous mass conscription which isn't squandered in insane and pointless mass casualty events ('offensives') will they be able to sustain a war that goes on for more than a few more months? Ukraine, on the other hand, can draw on NATO and Western Allied stocks and their economies ... with (as another poster pointed out) 20 times or more the size of Russian military spending. If the war lasts long enough the Russians will be hurting for artillery ammo ... and that doesn't even consider their probable lack of ability to recondition their increasingly clapped out artillery pieces (as someone else suggested). Railroad Gauge: Converting Russian 5'3" to Standard 4'8.5" is actually not all that hard. Despite the 'received wisdom' of German experiences in WW2 the actual conversion was a doddle. Just some guys with hand tools moving one rail in 6.5" closer to the other .. took very little time at all. THAT wasn't the problem. The ACTUAL problem was that Soviet RR infrastructure was designed to service much larger locomotives ... so watering points (vital for steam trains) and coaling points were roughly twice as far apart as what German locomotives needed. Likewise, Steam Engine and general Maintenance Facilities were roughly twice as far apart as well. The real problem was that most of the gear required was special order only ... it wasn't available off the shelf and the Germans had little or none stockpiled (they planned to use captured Russian locomotives and Rolling stock ... but it turned out that German Landsers just *loved* shooting locomotive boilers full of holes) and they didn't have a lot of slack in their economy to produce what was needed on the scale that was needed (in fact, they had a shortage of rolling stock for the entire war, and that often had negative effects on their military efforts). Theoretically, if you really wanted to run a single track line from Ukraine to the west you probably could for most of its length - it would only be where tunnels, bridges, cuttings etc were not wide enough for the wider rolling stock ... and, of course, converting Switching Yards (needed to change consists) over would be nontrivial. You could possibly even do it for double tracked lines with careful scheduling (which would be a nightmare, I would guess). Of course, if the Turks manage to re-open shipping from Odessa this is less of a problem (and, as the Ukrainians are now saying, RR transport wouldn't be enough anyway) Just some thoughts.